The last few days have been very busy, with final preparations before the flight out to Australia this evening. I did take a few hours off to go to watch the England-France rugby international at the Stade de France, which gave me a look at another sport, from the perspective of a spectator. It was not a great match, but it had a tense finish and a happy result for the anglais who had dared to invade France! The seats and view were terrific and were at a reasonable enough level to be a Christmas present from my girlfriend. It was a great gift and it reminded me that F1 fans must be VERY passionate to pay the prices they are asked to pay for their tickets.
OK, you can argue that you get a better class of person if you raise prices enough, and I have to admit that the people in front of us at the Stade de France were the worst advert I have ever seen for universal suffrage, but it was a great experience and I would happily do it once a year.
The game was a world class event, just as Grands Prix are, and rugby is a popular sport, and so the conclusion that I reached was that F1 tickets are generally overpriced, in comparative terms. This is not to say that the Formula One group should not get what it can for an event, but rather perhaps that local government should pay more, as it is the region that gains from all the economic activity generated by events.
Human nature being human nature, all the prices are hiked when the circus comes to town, and if the circus hikes its own prices as a result, the locals have only themselves to blame.
I will now leave you for 24 hours in the unsafe hands of the “F1 media” that would get lost trying to find the average racing circuit. Beware of stories suggesting Michael Schumacher will win the World Championship; or that Sebastian Vettel is going to ride to the North Pole on a llama called Maurice. That is about as likely to happen as someone paying $10 billion for the Formula One group… although there have always been schmucks in the world, and there always will be, so perhaps one of these banker types will be conned into believing that. Bankers can be very stupid on occasion, as the world has learned at its cost in recent years.
A long time ago when F1 first started dealing with City types I had a meeting with one of the big cheeses and warned him of the dangers ahead.
“Let me know if I’m going to get hit by an express train,” he said.
When, inevitably, that happened I could not think of a single reason to help the bloke… If people want to learn the hard way, who am I to stop them? And when I stopped to think about it, I could not remember any banker helping me out when I really needed it, without asking a disgraceful interest rate. So the train hit him, the venerable old bank for which he worked disappeared and all those involved duly popped up in other overpaid jobs some time later.
Hi Joe, before you you disappear in a metal tube for 24h, could you let us know when to expect the GP+ preview edition, I might have missed the post, but am subscribed to your RSS feeds and haven’t seen anything related yet.
Have a good flight!
There was an embargo situation that we cannot break so it will be out late Tuesday night UK time. There will be an alert on the blog and on Twitter when it happens
Sounds juicy, I am willing to wait
At least I haven’t missed the announcement.
Will you keep both domains (http://joesaward.wordpress.com/ & http://joeblogsf1.com/) completely in sync? I am subscribed to your old domain, and was wondering if it is advisable to move all RSS feeds over to the new domain? Or doesn’t it matter?
Embargo? How intriguing… Judicial or contractual?
…let me guess, you’ll tell us late Tuesday…
In any case, safe travels today and all season.
Journalistic
Safe travels, Joe.
Brilliant!
For a few years I watched the races regularly in Singapore and Malaysia in similar spots. This year I go to Silverstone and chose a similar turn. The prices of the 3 tickets respectively at full prices (not early bird): Singapore 1.9x of Britain and Britain is 2.25x of Malaysia. I am very excited to watch my first ever at Silverstone. I can’t understand why we are paying so much in Singapore. Although there are cheaper tickets available, anywhere else is a compromise as a fan knows exactly which part of the track to watch. Of course one could say the night race costs more to get it up. Yet I think it could be a little less. This year I chose to pay less for the Singapore race and convert into 3 F1s in a year! This sport is out of the reach for many except on TV (if one can afford to pay for satellite).
Pretty much everything in Singapore is substanially more expensive than elsewhere, regardless of whether the F1 is in town and no doubt for a variety of reasons. As a result I wasn’t really that surprised by the price of tickets to the race when I went last year.
Joe: As a “passionate” F1 fan who has paid the big money since the late 80s to attend a Grand Prix week-end or two a year, I have had to explain to non-believers how I could pay so much for a ticket. Well, it does cover three days of activities and is truly an “event” for me and many of the thousands that attend Grands Prix. I believe that I utlimately get my money’s worth in lifetime memories!! And yes, top level rugby is also a thrilling event to attend in person…Safe travels and we look forward to your blogs from the Down Under!!
It seems to be the emeging nations whose governments are prepared to underwrite the race hosting fees, think Singapore, Abu Dhabi, China, Malaysia… and what beautiful tv pictures the world audience sees from Abu Dhabi and Singapore.
The established races in Europe are maybe a little ‘hardbitten’ and perhaps have milked the economic viability of the F1 offer. They need to think creatively and re-invent themselves to flourish.
>>…I could not remember any banker helping me out when I really needed it, without asking a disgraceful interest rate…<<
If it makes you feel any better: as a bankruptcy lawyer, I make these people pay for their avarice by making them walk away empty-handed, one loan at a time. Trouble is, I love F1, chickens do come home to roost, and I have vague worries about F1 as a sport paying for the avarice of its directors after they've bailed out.
Well, I have not attended a Grand Prix in person since the 1986 British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch, and I doubt that I will do so unless the ticket prices come down one hell of a lot more…all of the prices at that event were, in a word, extortionate, and the overall lack of visibility of the whole of the circuit, despite the presence of an early big screen repeater TV in the infield, was the clincher for me.
Good grief Joe, the England game was one of the best games in recent history! England scoring early, the game see-sawing with France clawing it back and England triumphant at the end. The only F1 race like that last season was Canada.
Unfortunately for both sports one team tends to be dominant on the day, usually because of 2 reasons: one team is in a different class, or others are performing below expectations.
I have not missed a race for quite a few seasons on the tv (the logistics means going to races is a virtual impossibility to me) and if Red Bull is hundreds of points ahead by the 6th race what is the point of tuning into the BBC for *only half* of the remaining?
Anecdotally, when i was around who sold the larger Rugby contract mags, suggesting you had hospitality – of any kind – to a big match got your hand bitten off. Not so, with F1, at least comparably.
Best imagined in Peter Bull’s voice, even if it was Keenan Wynn i think, “there is a Hospitality Gap”. Obviously Bernie has buried the Doomsday Device .. which i guess is almost apt, as after all, we now fear opening up a Bernie Gap . .
But that’s beside the point. What do I do when i wake up night from bad dreams when there’s no blog, Joe!!
You have a very understanding girl there, Joe, lucky boy. My “present” is my love has got us running off to where i just know i am going to miss the race. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll be sailing . . I fear no chance at “re-education” on this matter. .. I was not allowed to book for Mauritius, on account she imagined me trawling bars looking for that incorporation agent! (all in good time, my dear, in good time
(I jest, of course, telling a geek with a laptop they’re not going to get some kind of feed is a monstrous underestimation of the fundamentals of life . . but I don’t think that has been done over Inmarsat too often . .)
Seriously, though, F1 doesn’t cut it when bribing, splutter I mean, arranging high level meetings for boardroom types anything like it should. Maybe it would work if Joe could be paid enough blood money to do a talk so the suits have a clue, but however it might be, it needs a shakedown. I think the image (at Paddock Club and so on) has become tawdry, just plain disconnected. Mauritius is still very much on my mind, just logistics of ensuring mom is set up safely have made for quite a bit of planning.
be safe, Joe, enjoy your journey, and thank you that if I do miss the race, I won’t get lost thanks to your lot!
all best to all,
– john
It’s all a dream John, too much cheese, (it lays on yer chest).
you Beaut, rpaco, i am indeed suffering from too much cheese, this bundle of sleepy joy i am sat next to on our way to the airport is the veggie type, but in such moments, my place is only to quietly go “awww” and plot my way to raw steak!
Ah Joseph,
Very pertinent point about the rugby; even though the tickets for international events are usually overpriced, and the best ones snapped up and sold on for an inflated rate by scalpers, they are still reasonable when compared with prices for most European GPs.
BTW my season ticket for London Irish, which costs not much more than a three-day pass for Silverstone, puts me almost on the half way line and five rows back from the front for 15 premiership home games a year…
SC
Have a good trip, it’s been a long wait, but we’re nearly at the start of what should be a great season. I will put up my F1 media blinkers!
Sounds like you have a bit of a grudge against bankers as you feel the need to stick the knife in every other post or so. Anyway..
You cannot seriously compare Rugby to F1, how is Rugby a global sport?? So are F1 tickets really that overpriced? I don’t like the high prices but if we stay close to home and compare two true world events then a night watching a Champions League match costs about (and that is if you can get hold of one at all!) £165 for cheapest Chelsea-Napoli match. Race day at Silverstone cheapest on Stowe is £190
Have a good flight.
Jeroen
It’s £20 for a ground ticket at Wimbledon (it’s only £8 on mens finals day). A ground ticket for the Open this year at Lytham & St Annes is £50. both world class sporting majors
a general admission ticket for race day at silverstone is £145.
p.s. Joe, is there anything that can be dome about the new comments font, I can hardly read it.
A test match ticket these days is £50-70 per day. An ODI would be about the same.
In one of his books, Alan Bennett mentions a yorkshire dialect word which means “even though I can afford that, I still don’t think it’s worth it”.
How is Rugby not a world sport??? played in more countries and by a greater percentage of the population than people participating in motorsport on any given weekend….
But no American, Russian, Japanese, Chinaman or Indian is going to buy razor blades on a the back of Rugby as they don’t watch it in those countries! That is roughly 2/3 of the razor blade buying population
Sorry, but saying that rugby isn’t a global sport then citing the Champions League (a European tournament) is hilarious.
For reference, the last rugby world cup brought together teams from all six continents on the planet. Formula 1 features teams from 4 countries in total (based on HQ location, not financial origins), all on the same continent. Drivers come from 5 different continents, no African nation has been represented since 1980.
But in general the UEFA Champions League actually isn’t a bad yardstick. It and F1 are arguably the most commercialised annual tournaments in the world. The UCL draws a TV audience from around the world although, much like F1, it’s very much concentrated in Europe.
Tickets for the UCL final seem to range from about £80 to £325 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/europe/9401141.stm) which is roughly in line with grand stand admission for F1.
That said, UEFA doesn’t expect the same fans to turn up to the event every year, the teams involved will likely change and the venue switches around the biggest stadia in Europe each season to ensure a fair spread.
“So are F1 tickets really that overpriced?”
Yes Jeroen, yes they are. The price of going to a GP is so far out of whack, clouds in loo-loo land are considering a three-day pass for Luffield.
Clearly you’re psyching yourself up for some awesome forthcoming season coverage here Joe ^_^
Have fun
You might not want to jump on the banker-bashing bandwagon – some of your most committed readers work in finance!
What do you make of Bernie’s recent comments about a budget cap being necessary in F1? Trying to scare Ferrari into a better deal?
My god your so right, I just read a story with Montezemolo going on about a third car again… wake me up when it’s over!
The problem with ticket prices is having to buy two or three.
And forget about receiving them as a present – “we could sit on a beech for a week or two for that sort of money”, I thought better of arguing 3 days at F1 would still be better. So yea, it’s waay expensive.
Well, if you thought the rugby was bad you must have high hope for the F1 season, because to anyone who knows anything about the game, that was a classic!
Have to say I know what you mean…we’re used to Joe venturing into unknown territory on this site. It’s the reason we love him so much!!
I reckon that if the Monty Python team asked Sebastian Vettel to ride to the North Pole on a llama called Maurice, Seb would do it for a good cause…
Regarding the price of F1 tickets, it is challenging to compare them with international Rugby game tickets. But they are directly comparable with MotoGP ticket prices, and I can afford to attend two of them in a year plus visits to UK national and club events. F1 and MotoGP are in direct competition. We will see this coming season whether MotoGP’s efforts to reduce costs are appropriate.
Judging by the crowds at MotoGP events in Spain last year, though, 100 Euro per head was too much for some. Spanish events were family occasions, not just for petrol heads. Is the idea of family concessions too difficult an idea to comprehend?
Well my sister paid 450$ to see Madonna in concert. When you take that into consideration, F1 is not that bad(depending on the venue of course)
Even if attending a GP was free and there was one happening just around the corner, I still wouldn’t want to sit at ONE corner, watching all the cars scream by through the same corner 60 times each. In slightly changing order, on a good day. That’s like going to watch football, but the view from your seat is restricted to a small patch of 5 x 5 meters. The rest of the game happens somewhere else, and you can’t see it, tough luck.
Where I saw the F1 live, there were large screens everywhere that essentially showed the TV feed. So cars screaming by just in front, and you see the whole feed just above the track… Works for me
Going to Montreal this year, and decided we’re probably going to fork out for the cheapest grandstand seats at £200, but we are grimacing at the cost, and it is making casual F1 fans I know in Montreal hesitating in joining us and probably ending up loving the sport. Looked into going to the IndyCar race at Detroit the weekend before, £100 for the best ticket and a 3 day paddock pass did make us all curse Bernie…
But…look at the state Indycar, Rallying and many others are in…it is so easy to forget what he has done for the sport.
There is no doubt Bernie has done some great things for the sport, but he’s now busy undoing it all again.
You can argue that he’s just doing his job making money for CVC but theres more than one way to do that.
How he can say “Change the colour of your glasses and tighten your belts. Stop spending more than you need to.” after what he’s just done to the household budgets of F1 fans in the UK beggars belief.
Joe, if you get a chance, grab a meal at Vlado’s in Melbourne. If you haven’t been, you’ll thank me (plus, by the photos on the wall, it seems to have attracted a number of F1 alumni in the past).
Great idea to experience another international sport from the standpoint of the fans. It is perhaps a pity that you didn’t choose to attend the France v Ireland match a few weeks back which had to be abandoned because the pitch was frozen (and the cheapskate Frogs don’t have under-turf heating). The cowardly promoters at the Stade de France, who were well aware that the sureface was too hard to be played safely, waited until the place was full before obliging the unfortunate match referee to make the final decision, passing the buck as our Gallic friends are so often inclined to do. Imagine the fury of Irish fans who’d come all that way! One thing in favour of F1 is that no race promoter would be allowed to get away with behaviour like that, probably because Bernie wouldn’t want to see his product devalued.
“This is not to say that the Formula One group should not get what it can for an event, but rather perhaps that local government should pay more, as it is the region that gains from all the economic activity generated by events.”
I can’t quite believe I just read that. The admission prices are huge to fund faceless men who have no interest in our sport at all. Furthermore, I’m not convinced about the economic benefits of F1 races, and I’ve never been able to fathom how Bernie had the gall to take not only the fee but all the advertising as well, or why people let him get away with it.
Anticipating your insight, great posts and the 2012 GP+ preview, the long winter is finally over and we’re looking forward with great excitement to the first race.
It’s an interesting comparison you make about ticket prices of a Rugby match vs a GP. I would think that they probably reflect the cost of putting on the event – whether the salaries and expenses of two sporting teams and the stadium rentals, or the cost of running a dozen F1 teams and dragging them around the globe to race at purpose built venues. I would think that the high price of GP tickets is probably in line with its overall cost.
What seems not to make much sense, though, is that so many people actually go to see these races live!
After you’ve been to a few and have felt the engine in your chest and watched the cars during qualifying at several corners (ahh, those exciting Friday pre-qualiys!) the actual ‘live’ race experience falls a little short.
You can’t get close enough to the track. You can’t see much. You rely on big screens to see the race. It’s more like being at an ‘event’ than an F1 race. I would think that real race fans, who actually follow the stuff, would much rather sit on a nice couch with friends, watch the recorded race at a decent time – rewinding at will to see what happened – and replaying the fine bits in slow motion.
With so many cameras, in-car cameras, replays, pre-race grid coverage, live pit lane reports and detailed tech pieces to watch (all without any commercial breaks thanks to PVR technology) why would anyone bother to pay hundreds of dollars to fight the massive crowds getting there, just to stand in lines, sit in the hot sun and be surrounded by noisy people mostly out to enjoy a party?
I suppose that improving the fan experience at an F1 event will, in future, be based on the rock concert, merchandise laden, phony A-list, party driven, theme park experience – the circus that comes to town once a year.
I’ve been in the nice limos – door to door to the Paddock Club – and while it’s a little better from that vantage point, most of those guests care little about the results on track.
Ticket prices aside, attending a live GP has never been high on the list of the race fans that I know. Is this just my experience?
HI Joe,
I go to the Melbourne GP most years and find the ticket prices a bit too high. I’m not sure what other venues charge but I paid $500 (about 330 pounds) for a seat last year and couldnt justify the price this year.
Compare that to the times this year I went to see state and international cricket/soccer/Australian open Tennis and F1 isnt great value here in Aus.
The 5pm start for the GP also means having to take the Monday off work.
I am a realist though and understand the reasons for such a high ticket price (hosting fees and infrastructure costs). Unfortunately I guess Melbourne will eventually lose the race to some distant regime in the middle east with a questionable human rights record. F1 will then beam empty grandstands across the world rather than the full stands of a Melbourne GP.
If F1 goes pay TV here in Australia and it loses its Melbourne race, it will lose a number of fans. Whether F1 notices? Probably not.
slight difference this year, Nick … Kimi is on the grid.
I would happily pay $500 this time to see the ‘stunning six’ of 2012
You are a fantastic journalist, Joe. But no need to diss the other “F1 media” — everybody brings their own different perspectives and readers, particularly yours, are mature enough to know what’s legit and what’s not!
All best.
Just on tickets – most years recently, we’ve found ourselves holidaying near (well, certainly within driving distance) of Spa during the GP.
As a family of 5 where 80% are disinterested, tickets for the GP itself are cost prohibitive. But I’d like to take them to ONE friday session. Noises, sounds, speed ….
They sell “Sunday Only” tickets, and “All weekend” tickets. I dont know the proportions, but surely for every “Sunday Only”, there is bum less on a seat on a Friday , yet they dont sell “Fri/Sat” tickets. Anyone know why?
I’d love to show the disinterested 80% “live” why Daddy banishes them from the TV on 20 Sundays. Friday tickets, an opportunity missed?
“It was a great gift and it reminded me that F1 fans must be VERY passionate to pay the prices they are asked to pay for their tickets.”
$500 AUD for a 4 day grandstand is a bloody big price – which I only begrudgingly pay because as I get older I’m not keen to get to the track as gates open – run to the good sport – and claim my spot all day
But it is not good value against any other sport or motorsport
Well said…
See the link below for proof.
http://thechive.com/2012/03/12/nascar-weekend-draws-an-interesting-crowd-20-photos/
Sorry to counter your cosy assertions here Joe.
Bankers are never stupid. If only they were….
In a few years the real history of the bank crisis 2008 -20?? will be told.
First they had a problem with “bad debts” they said [as if]; then every government was fleeced of public cash [to save the banks..]; every saver lost out on was the bank would have paid them ….
Now, who is stupid? Not the bankers obviously
No it won’t. As is Jerez years ago (flower pots) and China recently (advertising), it will cover up the empty grandstands in the (vain) hope people won’t notice.
Hi Joe,
You might have missed this because of your flight but there has been some **BREAKING NEWS** on various websites in the past few hours.
Apparently, McLaren are confident of victories in 2012 – with Whitmarsh being quoted as saying, “We should be expecting to win races this year”.
In other news – Lotus are being quoted as saying that their chasis failure during testing was a “setback”.
Really exciting and surprising stuff!
Have a good trip.
the hack – what about the USGP michelin farce?
In 2010 we had a weekend at the British GP – Paid almost £300 (each) for the 3 day grandstand tickets, so it was £100 per day. We had 3 hours (I think) on the friday, 2.5 hours on the saturday and 90 minutes on the sunday.
Then we had to pay £60 to camp in a field for three nights, plus food. Total came to about £720. For two people to camp in a field.
That is REALLY pricey, I don’t care how many days of F1 we saw.
With the current economic situation, is it any wonder crowds are dropping ? But does Bernie care ? Only if the CVC bank balance gets affected.
love it , joe , as ever , spot on
Jo, I assume you get some satisfaction from your job – else you wouldnt still be doing it. And I cant understand your antipathy to people being well remunerated in banking, but not comment on it in F1. Surely a humane approach to your banking contact would have been to warn him of the train wreck ahead, even if you couldnt have negotiated a position for yourself in doing so. It just makes you sound rather bitter and jaded, and it makes me feel sorry for you to have lost a little humanity. Maybe youve been around Bernie and the circus too long?
Not being entirely direct here, but if you ever had the experience of trying to stay aboard a imminent train wreck, even with the best of motivations, all I can say is i am trying to work some of the behaviours into a book without getting sued. I’m talking really base. Name businesses and owners who were told better and capable to know better diving into drunken (and far worse) vindictive violence. Sometimes being asked if there is a disaster awaiting is just a way for a player to try to ensnare someone who might know, so to later allocate blame. The difference with a bunch of prototypical bankers (of whom many good ones count as my friends) is they are better protected from life’s travails. You get some other kinds of acting up, instead. So, I don’t know if Joe was being jaded, or prescient or plain careful, or just took a look at the characters and thought “nooooo thank you!”. I could direct some well aimed ones at some utter plonkers I met, too, and you’d think me right bitter. I’m pretty mad just recollecting, mainly because i never threw one back, well not that way. Good, that keeps me out of further trouble brought upon by being nice to self destructive people. Lesson learned the hard way, as usual. If someone thinks there’ll be a train wreck, and asks advice, they should offer accordingly for the insurance. That’s banking. Anything else is abuse.
Joe, I get rankled when you suggest that governments should kick in money to essentially subsidize the grand prix races in their country/state/city.
The argument that such events provide an economic multiplier is similar to the one used for not just your non favorite sporting events such as the Olympics and the cities that vie for placement on the route of non-fixe cycling events such as the National tours including the Tour de France. It has also been used by owners of various professional sports teams in attracting new stadium deals, Kick in some scheckles and you’ll see that money come back at a greater rate than what was invested. The problem is this isn’t realized with Stadiums which have multiple events a year, and are truly multi-use (there are many studies to back this up).
I would love to know if there are facts to back up the multiplier effect of investment into F1 circuits, and of the money spent how much goes to local businesses and how much goes to outside entities that take that money back home with them.
I do appreciate F1, but think that it is being priced out of reach of those who don’t have a drawer full of $800-10,000 watches. As a whole I’m seeing less and less of a return from sport to society for the money and interest that they take in. Here in the US parents are under the impression that a few thousand dollars invested in their child’s athletic endeavors will yield college scholarships, and maybe a professional career, it has seems to have gotten to the point that colleges aren’t for education and training, but a non-paying farm team for basketball and football with a built in captive audience willing to subsidize the programs.
And then there are all the charlatans out their preying on the youngsters as they make their way up the channels in their teen and pre-teen years, just start to look at that, and it is very easy to question whether sport really deserves the attention we pay to it.